Houston Pickleball Center — Local services in Houston

2 stars for the good times I have here, negative stars for the bad experiences on 9/17/24 & my paddle being stolen on 8/25/24. I’ve been to this place many times in the past few months with other group of friends and have never had this experience where we were giving warning to hurry up and get off court when we barely got 5 minutes on the court. Mo/management compensated us with “one-time free pass” due to their overbooked 9/17/24 Tuesday night for this but the experience left a negative vibe to us. I wrote out what happened but it was too long per Google standards so I simplified it.

9/17/24: Brought my beginner-friends to come play around 7:10pm, we waited until 7:50pm for open court like everyone. Mid-warming up for our first game, less than 5 minutes, Mo/management came to our court and told us to hurry and play and get off. It was a very aggressive approach and basically ruined the whole vibe of the game for us. We continued regardless and finished our game and got off court at 8:05pm.

While we were waiting and discussing what just happened, Mo came to us and we had a conversation about it. He basically said that because “it’s a busy night and that they reserved courts for events, he suggested us to not come during these nights since it gets overcrowded, especially on these Tuesday’s nights when there’s events. If we personally want to play longer game, we can just reserved court for ourselves and he even suggested the private room. (But then backtracked and said that was reserved too? So why even suggested it?) There’s only 4 open courts and others came to play but didn’t want to wait. Other customers were “complaining” that we were beginners and they wanted to play instead.” - it was back and forth but this was the gist of it. Mo suggested a compensation of free games for us to come back another day/time, so we took it and left in hope next time we return would be better vibes than this.

Here are the issues my friends and I discussed: It’s not a paying customer’s fault if management overbooked/over-reserved courts. We paid and waited patiently just like everyone else for open court, didn't rush anyone and went to play when it was our turn, we were on the court less than 5 minutes before Mo rushed us to play to get off court and that we only have a set time to play.

If there are SET AMOUNT OF TIME TO PLAY, please put that somewhere on your court or website that’s visible to all players. And does that mean if others play longer, do they get kicked off mid game?

NOT BEGINNERS FRIENDLY? We (Pickleball community) all started somewhere when we first played, learning how to play is part of the game. I don’t understand the hostility and lack of empathy towards new players who are trying to learn & understand the rules.

Management shifting blames on other customers who complained about beginners were highly unprofessional. When we were in the middle of our conversation, Mo told us other customers were complaining about beginners on court, our random reaction was “who is complaining on beginners?” (Our thought process was WE WERE ALL BEGINNERS at one point) and him pointing towards the people on the metal fence waiting shifting blame towards them was something I’ve never witnessed business done before. Disclaimer: he pointed towards a family I personally played with and get along with, who played with me a few times/longer games before and even taught me how to play when I was a beginner myself so I knew it wouldn’t be them who “complained”.

Also from my 8/25/24 stolen paddle - still unresolved and my paddle is still missing till this day.

8/25/24 around 1pm - my paddle was stolen when it was placed in one of the buckets. Not sure if someone mistaken it as theirs and walked off with it. I reported it to the front desk to look into security camera and they said they couldn’t, told me to write on a piece of paper to leave a name and phone number and when they find it, they will let me know. If you have a paddle here, write your name on it or something. People can walk off with...

My wife and I had been members at HPC for ~18 months. This was the first private/indoors club we played at. Before that, we used to play at Jaycee Park! We are relocating so, unfortunately, we had to cancel our membership. But the experience we've had warrants a review!

TLDR (for a loooong review): It's an awesome place to play pickleball, irrespective of your skill level. The highlight of the club is the community (both the HPC team and the players)

HPC team: Diep, Bringhton, Vivian, Leo, Mo, and Tuyen are just awesome. Every single one of them is helpful and friendly. They are a big part of why it's been such a great experience for us!

Courts: 10 great indoor courts + a practice/drilling court. No dividers between courts, so there is an occasional interruption due to balls from other courts; but it's not too big of a problem.

Other infra: They have a big lobby with plenty of seats and a bar-style counter. This makes it easy to get other work done while you're waiting for your open play turn! In addition there's a party/events room, as well as another waiting room just inside the main door!

Cameras: Because they're listed on livepickleballcourts.com, you can view each court, LIVE! This lets you see whether it's too crowded to go play! Also makes it possible to download game reels for analysis.

Pricing: We used to pay $140 (after-tax) for a couples membership. They also have non-member open-play 10-packs that amount to ~$12.5 per day! This has to be the best value-for-money membership in Houston!

Open Play: Positive: Open play has a single queue for all courts. You put your paddle in a 4-player bucket and wait your turn. Buckets are color-coded based on self-rated skill-level (Blue:2.5-3.0 | Green:3-3.5 | Yellow: 3.5-4.0 | Red: 4.0+). HPC has a good mix of skill levels. If everyone is honest with their self-rating, the level of games is very good. Occasionally some people choose to stack up well above their skill-level, messing up the game for the others. But there's nothing the management can do about it. Overall, the community of players is friendly and respectful. There have been some instances of double-stacking or queueing up by proxy, but the staff always stamps down hard on this. Overall it's a very good setup.

One polarizing aspect of their open play is that it is day-based rather than session-based. If you pay for open play on a day, you can play as much as you want, including leaving and then coming back later in the day. The upside, especially if you are a member, is that you can just show up and play, instead of having to register in advance. Even for a day-based open-play players, not having a limit on how much you can play that day is great. Another plus of this system is that as a member, you have courts available for drilling during day-time low-traffic hours. The downside, of course, is that because open-play registrations are not capped, it can get crowded between 5PM and 11PM. In contrast, I've also played at clubs with 3-hour open play slots, where registrations are capped to 8x the # of courts (e.g. 128 people for 16 courts) so that the wait time is ~1 game. Both systems have their trade-offs, and it comes down to personal preference.

Hosting Events: This place is great for hosting events. I've done so a couple of times, for work-related folks and the experience has been smooth.

Lots of positives. Very minor negatives....

I've been to HPC more than a handful of times, during emptier hours as well as very crowded ones. Each time has been a great experience.

The staff members are nice and quite easy to get along with. They're pretty receptive and quick to help if assistance is needed (like one time I mentioned the soap in the men's restroom had run out and not even five minutes later, it was already refilled).

The facilities themselves are what people are interested in though - the courts themselves are great quality to play on. That nice gritty texture. It's always clean - I've personally seen the staff go through earnest measures to maintain their usability and cleanliness.

The lighting is usually on point, but there are a few corners that get seem a little dimmer since the natural sunlight will make the strong majority of court space very bright. It hasn't been a major issue for any gameplay, though.

Being an indoor facility, they do the best they can with cooling measures. During the early day and evenings, it's pleasant enough. Around 2-5pm on summer days, you'll notice it getting warmer, but it still beats being out in the direct sunlight and humidity by a longshot. The staff is aware, and I -think- they have plans to improve insulation a bit more.

Open play is pretty generous here. Basically an all-day open play pass for a mere $15? It attracts a wide variety of players, which is great for both newer and seasoned players. The paddle queue'ing system is pretty simple, where different color buckets will represent the perceived skill. Experienced players here, in my personal experience, have been very nice and are great at downleveling their gameplay when playing against less experienced players. It provides a great atmosphere for those who are newer to get a bit of a push to challenge them to newer higher levels of gameplay.

The parking isn't bad, either, usually with a spot opening up or available during the most crowded of hours (and you can check how crowded HPC is via their two livestreams). All-in-all, a pretty smooth and nonchalant experience every time...